Key Issues

The Public Forum is the WTO’s largest annual outreach event in Geneva, which provides a platform for participants to discuss the latest developments in world trade and to propose ways of enhancing the multilateral trading system.

This year’s theme is about expanding trade through innovation and the digital economy.

"A digital economy for all" is one where consumers confidently access global markets and engage with merchants across borders and cultures. Importantly, that involves participation by consumers and businesses from and in developing countries.

This workshop will discuss how technology and policy can create empowered market participants. Technology services, global networks and online marketplaces are indeed putting in place the foundation for empowerment by lowering search costs, facilitating information access, and helping to create trust. What policies, standards and legal frameworks will support the rise of confident global consumers and merchants?

Moderator: Phil Evans, Coordinator of the International Network of Consumer Antitrust Advisers

The main objective of this session is to identify what the issues of interest are to consumers and SMEs in Trade Facilitation (TF) and how they are being considered in the current WTO TF negotiations. The session will identify how TF can contribute to consumer welfare and SME competitiveness. It will also seek to draw linkages between current TF standards and consumer and SME concerns and how current TF standards can be adapted or improved.

The session will be based on a proposed CUTS project seeking to promote a proconsumer and pro-competitiveness TF reform in developing countries.

13.00-15.00 - Unleashing the potential for FDI and trade in developing countries: the case for a multilateral agreement on investment

This session aims to discuss the latest trends in investment policies and trade and their impact on development and business. How is the existing governance framework for investment impacting the trade performances and policies of developing countries? How could investment be unleashed to enable trade, development and innovation?

15.00-17.00 - Making trade and innovation work for productive development: the case for regulating capital flows in a high tech world

Trade, innovation and the Digital Economy have had a very significant impact on crossborder financial flows by facilitating these enormously and creating new types of cross border flows. Whilst potentially generating benefits, they can also create very serious risks, for instance by making cross-border finance more volatile.

The session will explore the links between innovation and the rules of the trading system and the regulations of a country's capital account. Relevant questions include: to what extent do specific investment-related rules of the trading system constrain the policy space that nations need to deploy proper regulation to mitigate the harmful effects of cross-border financial flows? What global economic governance structures might be needed to facilitate the proper regulation of cross-border finance, so as to ensure trade and innovation work for productive development?

Moderators:

Kevin Gallagher, Professor and Co-Director of the Global Economic Governance Initiative, Department of International Relations, Boston University